The Two-Stream Approach

“Build your research world before you know your story. Build your story skeleton before you need research. Let them collide.”

Writers Factory teaches context engineering through a deliberate separation of two creative streams. This isn’t arbitrary—it’s how professional novelists actually work, externalized into a system.

The Problem with Traditional AI Writing

Most AI writing tools ask you to do everything at once:

1. “Tell me about your character” → immediately generates a character sheet
2. “What’s your plot?” → immediately generates an outline
3. “Write chapter one” → immediately generates prose

The result? Generic fiction. The AI has no depth to draw from. It invents details on the fly, which means it invents average details—the statistical middle of everything it’s ever read.

Writers Factory solves this by separating intent from ingredients.

Stream 1: Research (Interest-Driven)

“What fascinates you as a person, regardless of any specific story?”

Stream 1 captures your creative library—the obsessions, expertise, and aesthetic preferences you’d bring to any novel you write.

What Goes in Stream 1

• The Arena: Competition, sports, high-stakes games you follow
• The Speculation: Forecasts, emerging trends, “what if” scenarios
• Beliefs & Worldviews: Philosophy, religion, political debates that hook you
• Literary Roots: Authors who feel like home
• The Voice: Speaking styles, prose rhythms you admire
• Visual Language: Films, shows, visual aesthetics
• The Rabbit Hole: Niche expertise, obscure knowledge

Key Principle: No Story in Mind

When building Stream 1, you’re not thinking about your novel. You’re capturing:

• What you’d read anyway
• What you already know deeply
• What makes you emotional
• What you find beautiful

This is your closed world of creative ingredients. It exists independently of any specific story.

Why This Works

Research collected without a story agenda is:

• More authentic (it’s genuinely yours, not reverse-engineered)
• More surprising (you don’t know how it’ll be used yet)
• More reusable (same research can fuel multiple projects)

Stream 2: Skeleton (Intent-Driven)

“What story do you want to tell, even if you don’t know the details yet?”

Stream 2 captures your narrative intent—the rough shape of a story before you know how to fill it.

What Goes in Stream 2

The 25-question interview generates your Story Skeleton:

• The Hook: What’s the dramatic question?
• Character Core: Protagonist, flaw, want vs. need
• World Building: Setting, rules, constraints
• Structure: Beginning state, ending state
• Theme: What argument does the story make?
• Voice: What should it feel like to read?
• Texture: Sensory details, character quirks

Key Principle: Rough, Not Perfect

The skeleton is deliberately incomplete. You’re capturing:

• The core conflict (even if vague)
• The protagonist’s wound (even if you don’t know the backstory)
• The world’s central rule (even if you haven’t built the world)
• The emotional destination (even if you don’t know the path)

Why This Works

A rough skeleton:

• Creates constraints (the AI has boundaries to work within)
• Preserves discovery (details emerge from collision with research)
• Enables iteration (you can refine as you learn more)

The Intersection: Where Discovery Happens

When Stream 1 (research) meets Stream 2 (skeleton), something unexpected happens: connections the writer didn’t consciously plan.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                           THE INTERSECTION                                   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                             │
│   STREAM 1 (Research)              STREAM 2 (Skeleton)                      │
│   ───────────────────              ────────────────────                     │
│                                                                             │
│   Your Arena research              Your protagonist's flaw                  │
│   about chess grandmasters    ──▶  becomes fear of losing control          │
│                                    (specific, grounded in real psychology) │
│                                                                             │
│   Your Rabbit Hole on              Your world's central rule                │
│   nuclear submarine              ──▶  becomes "information is survival"      │
│   operations                       (authentic, textured with real detail)  │
│                                                                             │
│   Your Voice notebook on           Your narrator's tone                     │
│   Hunter S. Thompson           ──▶  becomes manic-precise observation       │
│                                    (distinctive, not generic "literary")   │
│                                                                             │
│                    Neither stream dictates to the other.                    │
│                    The collision creates something new.                     │
│                                                                             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The Connection Point

The intersection happens through the Connection Point—the automated system that uses your Story Bible as a lens to filter your Codex.

The system uses your Story Bible keywords (character flaws, themes, setting rules) to query your Research Library, finding semantic connections between:

• Research ingredients you collected for general interest
• Story elements you defined for this specific project

This is where your chess research suddenly illuminates your character’s psychology. Where your submarine expertise shapes your world’s rules. Where your Thompson obsession becomes your narrator’s voice.

Why Two Streams Beat One

The Single-Stream Problem

If you research for your story:

• You only find what you’re looking for
• Research confirms your assumptions instead of challenging them
• You miss adjacent possibilities
• The AI generates from a narrow context

The Two-Stream Advantage

If research and story evolve separately, then collide:

• Research surprises you with unexpected connections
• The skeleton constrains without dictating
• Adjacent expertise enriches your fiction
• The AI generates from a deep, authentic context

Practical Workflow

Phase 1: Build Your Research World (Stream 1)

1. Create 2-4 NotebookLM notebooks based on your interests
2. Collect sources without any story in mind
3. Focus on depth over breadth
4. Let your obsessions guide you

Phase 2: Build Your Story Skeleton (Stream 2)

1. Complete the 25-question interview
2. Answer from instinct, not planning
3. Accept rough answers—you’re capturing intent
4. Download your Story Skeleton

Phase 3: Create the Intersection

1. Export your notebooks as JSON (using the NotebookLM Tools extension)
2. Import them into your Research Library (The Codex)
3. The system embeds every chunk, making your research “searchable”

Phase 4: Generate with Context

1. Run the Connection Point extraction
2. The system uses your Story Bible as a lens to filter the Codex
3. It creates a Research Graph (~50 curated ingredients)
4. Build your full Story Bible in Architect Mode

Related Documentation

Two streams. One collision. Unexpected fiction.